Opinion Brief: Monday, February 9, 2015

Tonight’s Opinion Brief is brought to you by The Snowflake Ball’s Valentine’s Day Ball. On Saturday, February 14, at Hilton Lac-Leamy, join us for an exceptional evening celebrating the glamour & romance of Springtime in Paris. In support of CHEO’s Inflammatory Bowel Disease Centre and Screen Colons Canada.

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Good evening, subscribers. Sooo … Eve and Dmitri to the Liberals, Poilievre to the Employment ministry. In other news: Day is night, rain falls up and Stephen Harper and Mike Duffy are opening a small bistro together.

It’s days like today that remind us that, when it comes to federal politics in an election year, anyone who claims to know what’s coming is either delusional or lying. So we’ll leave it to Tasha Kheriddin to sum up the capital’s collective climate of gobsmacked: “Soudas sent out a tweet supporting Adams’ decision, and CTV News reported that he will be working on her nomination campaign. But unless his role extends beyond that — unless, for example, he’s sending a pile of data the LPC’s way — the whole thing remains incomprehensible.”

As for Harper’s cabinet shuffle — while it certainly lacked the jaw-dropping quality of the Adams-Soudas migration, it did show a canny politician making the most of his material, says Chris Waddell. “Expect Kenney to quickly become the main government spokesman on all anti-terrorism and security issues in the months ahead. Public Security Minister Steven Blaney, who has proven to be a major communications liability, can melt into the background without the political embarrassment of a cabinet shuffle demoting a Quebec minister months before an election.”

Two pieces tonight on Europe’s mad scramble to head off a wider war in Ukraine. First, from Yaroslav Baran of Euromaidan Ottawa, an open letter to Angela Merkel pleading with the German chancellor not to allow Vladimir Putin to dictate terms to Ukraine — and to allow Western nations to ship badly-needed weapons to Kyiv. “Ukraine needs modern armaments — particularly anti-tank systems and more sophisticated communications capabilities. More tanks have crossed from Russian to Ukraine in the last month than in the preceding year. With the latest anti-tank and communications systems available, the cost of a renewed military push into Ukraine would simply be too high for Russia.”

And from David Carment of the Canadian Foreign Policy Journal, the counter-argument. Sending lethal equipment to Ukraine now would only inflame the situation, he says, while doing little or nothing to actually enhance Kyiv’s ability to defend itself. “With pressure from Republicans committed to confrontation with Russia, the U.S. has worked itself into a corner. The Europeans are now in charge. If the Americans are sincere about bringing peace and stability to Ukraine, they will need to support the European initiative rather than undermine it by escalating the conflict.”